Name: dsarosh Date: May 11, 2008 at 11:38:20 Pacific Subject: DVD drives overheating. OS: win xp +sp2 CPU/Ram: e6550, 3gb Model/Manufacturer: Assembled
Comment:
Earlier I had a sony dru 170A dvd writer. This writer would burn cds or dvds just fine, but it was unable to read most dvds. The same dvds would work fine on other comps, but my sony dvd drive could not read them. Also I noticed that this dvd drive would get very very hot, which is not normal for a dvd drive. So I purchased anotehr lg super multi dvd writer.
Now I find that this lg dvd writer is getting as hot as, or even hotter thant the sony. Only difference is that the lg writer is able to read all the disks that my sony could not.
But why are these drivves heating up so much? Is it the way I have configured my motherboard? I have used settings in the bios to set all the sata drives to "legecy" and ata. I have one ide and one sata hard disk, and the sony was a ide dvvd rom and the current lg is alo an ide drive.
I find that even if the dvd rom is not used for horus, the underside of it gets really very hot. Have I just purchased a defective LG drive, or have I configured my bios such that its always driving the dvd roms and heating them.
The issue may have something to do with the circulation in your case. Do you have the optical drive in the very top bay of your case? Do you have other drives in adjecent bays? What type of case are you using?
You are right that it has something to do with my new case, and I think I have sorted the problem, but I will have to wait longer to verify.
I unplugged the power and data cable from the dvd rom and ran the computer a while, and I noticed that the dvd rom was still very warm. The reason is the 160GB hard disk which is attached bellow it. I think it is an older 7200rpm disk so its getting very hot and it was heating up the entire metal vertical plates that were supporting it, and this heat was reaching the dvd rom and heating it up all over.
I have now removed the 160gb drive and placed it vertically on the bottom of the cabinet, and have moved the dvd rom one slot lower in order for the data cable to reach, becasue I have only one ata cable slot on my motherboard.
I think this should not heat up the dvd any more.
Earlier it would stay warm all day, and when I would copy a dvd it would get so hot that it almost burnt my finger, hopefully its sorted out now.
I found out that the heat was not due to any hard disk. I removed all disks from the top portion of the bay, and the aluminum vertical supports are still getting warm.
My only guess is that it is picking up heat from the botherboard. Even the psu is very cool to the touch, and only the inside part of the vertical supports heats up first, so I can only guess its taking heat from the motherboard side.
Anyway, I reattached the sata drive about 1 inch up from the very bottom from of the cabinet, and the intake fan blows air over it.
I attached the ata drive below the cd rom drive, because they share the same data cable.
I guess I cant stop this heating, and I only hope the dvd wont burn up.
As for your first DVD writer, burners have two lasers...one for burning and one for reading. The reading laser was dead.
As for your case, heat will always be generated when the computer is on. Hard drives spin, CPU's process, etc. With a good case and fans, a computer should be set up to dissipate the heat.
It sounds like you have poor air circulation. The ATX convention has it that cool air comes from the bottom of the front of the case, and is expelled at the top rear (via the PSU). Is your only fan the PSU fan?
This cabinet has one gride near the bottom back portion for air to enter near the grapics card. It also has that funnerl kind of grid near the cpu for the cpu to suck in cool air. At the front it has an intake fan that pushes cold air into the cabinet. Its also got a completely removable front panel, which makes installing hds very easy.
My PSU has only one big fan at the bottom, and it blows out most of the air out the behind fo the cabinet, but it also has a small grid on it facing inside the cabinet, and little air blows towards the inside of the cabinet through this grid. However, I have check all other parts and they are very cool to the touch. The psu is almost as warm as the walls in my room, cant sense any heat in it. My only guess is that the front case is taking heat from the motherboard.
Earlier I had a sony dvd from, this LG dvd rom is just a few days old. The sony would write cds and dvds, but it would not be able to read back the samd dvds it wrote, and most other dvds. I thought the sony dvd was over heating because it was spoilt. But yesterday I found that the brand new lg dvd too becomes buring hot while transfring a dvd to the hard disk, although the lg reads all disks fine so far, the heat is very intense.
But you never had this hardware in your old case, did you?
You don't need a front intake fan, but you should have a rear exhaust fan, preferrably 120mm. It doesn't sound like you have one installed?
Also, boards generally don't get very hot. Try checking both the system & CPU temps in the BIOS. If you're reasonably sure the heat isn't coming from the HDD(s) or the DVD drive itself, it must be something else in that general area. RAM maybe?
BTW, did you get a new job or something? You seem to be spending a lot of money on upgrades. A year ago, we couldn't even convince you to invest in a decent PSU...lol
"And that's the fishing line, because Sharkboy said so!"
Haha, I just like to upgrade after few years, because upgrading often is no upgrade at all. When you upgrade after a while then thats some real improvements you can notice. And that 300W psu you guys hated so much is still working, I gave it to my friend and he is using it on his dads computer lol. And that was a refurbished card I was taking a risk with anyway.
Money was not the biggest problem, but mostly i've been dissapointed by the hype around new hardware. The greatest difference I find is in the faster hard disk I have now, photoshop loads in about 8 seconds the first time, and in about 3 seconds if I close and open it agian. This is some major performance benifit and I think it is only because of the faster hard disk. I could buy a 250$ card now too, but I'm sure it wont allow me to run all the games on full settings. But if I wait 6 to 8 months and buy a card for 250$ it probably will run all the previous games at full settings.
There is one intake fan and there is one exhaust fan placed just below my power supply. Nothing in the cabinet is realy heating up, so its a bit puzzling why only that front casing area is heating up.
The cpu temp is about 46C, which I think is ok. There are more temperature settings, but I think all of them are normal or the board would give me some warning.
This heat generation is a bit of a puzzle, and maybe I will figure it some day, but right now I have no clue.
"that was a refurbished card I was taking a risk with anyway"
"Refurbished" can mean different things. It could mean the item was purchased, then returned...it could also mean that something was missing from the package (driver CD for instance) & the box had to be opened to insert the CD. Another possibility is that an actual repair was made. Regardless, once the box is opened, the item can no longer be sold as "new", so it's labeled "refurbished" or "open box" & sold at a discount. There was nothing wrong with that video card until you over-overclocked it.
"The greatest difference I find is in the faster hard disk I have now, photoshop loads in about 8 seconds the first time, and in about 3 seconds if I close and open it agian"
And what are you comparing it to - the exact same system with a "slow" HDD or your old system? HDD performance hasn't improved all that much from IDE to SATA. There may be a big difference when comparing the specs on paper, but in the real world, the improvements are minimal. If you're comparing your old system to the new, the difference is because of the more efficient CPU, higher FSB speed, faster RAM (& more of it), better motherboard chipset, better IDE/SATA controller, etc. The HDD itself has very little to do with it.
"And that's the fishing line, because Sharkboy said so!"
for more information. The read laser is only intense enough to read information. The write laser is more intense and can "burn" the disc. The erase laser is halfway between...it's only hot enough to reset the disc.
I was pretty sure there was more than one laser. After all, I have a computer science degree. You almost had me; for a moment, I thought my education was obsolete and that they had new technology or something.
dsarosh, photoshop opening quickly when you close and re-open it is not due to the hard drive. When you load a program, data/instructions from that program are loaded into memory that has been allocated for the program. When you close the program, the computer does not wipe the instructions. If it did, computers would be slower because to delete something, the computer has to actually write to the memory. This is a memory write access, and memory can be a bottleneck. So anyway, when you re-open your program, it has already some of the information it needs in memory already.
Even if you didn't upgrade your memory and only upgraded your hard drive, it would be expected. The faster hard drive will pull data quicker so that the information gets to the memory quicker. Also, if you have low memory, your computer might be swapping to virtual memory (e.g., the hard drive). Photoshop takes alot of memory. In this case, the faster hard drive would help as well.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to get across is that the first time you run a program will always be slower than re-opening the program.
Lol, Jam still remember the old 6600GT. BTW, interesting stuff happened to my 6800xt... broken fan and popped capacitor.... but it still worked fine. Only if you realy want to know and promise not to make fun I can tell you, lol.
Name:.... I am aware of how ram works and stuff. I've been using the same adobe suite on 1GB of ddr 266mhz ram for almost 3-4 years. Even on that system the application would load faster the second time, becasue it read from the ram.
But my observations are this... About a weeek or so ago I was trying to get to dual booth vista and xp, and I had my older xp installation with photoshop and all applications on my older 160GB hd. And this would not load any faster. Even photshop on vista or xp on the older 160GB hard disk would take no sooner to start up the first time.
But when installed on the new hard disk, its just taking about 6-7 seconds to load up the first time. I have tried extracting 4.3gb rar files from the same hard disk, and I think its taking only about 40% of the time it used to take on my older 160GB hard disk.
Maybe it has more memory buffer, maybe the motherboard has much better drivers for new hard disks, etc, etc, but the biggest upgrade I am experiencing is the hard disk speed.
Ofcorse, gaming is a whole new experience too. Games that would not even play their intro movies on my older system now play at 30fps.
Look at the link below for information on current technology. Note the excerpt I included in this post. “typically using the same laser used to read the disk”.
I don’t doubt the original technology used two lasers. Since that ti;me controllers have been developed to vary the intensity and use the same laser to read and write. Typically the laser will write to a test track when first starting and change intensity until the read back eliminates reading errors. This process determines the speed at which the burn will take place. If you will note the article you link is for a CD only burner. I conclude this is because it predates combination burners and the newer technology. The link at the bottom is for a company that manufactures the controllers to vary the intensity.
Technology marches on. What you recall is correct for its time
CD then evolved into recordable technologies, including a write-once technology known as CD-R and a rewritable format known as CD-RW. These differed from classic CD- ROM as they are produced by writing a pattern onto a photochemical layer on special disks, typically using the same laser used to read the disk, albiet at higher power. The results of the recording process are intended to optically duplicate the appearance of pressed media.
